At Path To Publishing, we've been speaking, teaching, and--dare I say it--preaching abundance for the last few months. January is Poverty Awareness Month, so all the talk about abundance may seem insensitive in light of that, but abundance isn't just for those with deep pockets. It's for everyone.
Abundance is your birthright!
If you told me at the beginning of last year that $5,000 was not a big deal, I would have been insulted and indignant. I would have said, "Not that big a deal to YOU, Ms. Privilege, but to me, it's four months' rent!"
I was barely scraping by and living week-by-week not knowing for sure where the money was coming from or when it would arrive. Fear, anxiety, and worry about the future were near-constant companions for me.
I dreamed of a day when I would have enough of everything I needed that I wasn't worried about the future or afraid of losing what little I possessed. In 2019, shortly before publishing Turning Problems Into Profits, I heard God tell me that I was going to need to learn to live without money. I'll confess that the idea sounded nice but the practical reality of how to do that was something I struggled with figuring out. What did that even mean? How was I supposed to live without money?
Over time, I began to catch on to the reality that God didn't build this world with money. There's not a single apple tree that has a coin slot built into it. There's not a single piece of untouched land that has a place to insert dollar bills. Man made money, and man controls who has money and who doesn't. It's a useful tool for ensuring that two people are trading an equal amount of value, but that's all it is. It isn't necessary for living. Man made it necessary.
That still didn't help me figure out how to live without money. My landlord certainly wasn't about to let me stay rent free on his property. Buying food at the store required money. I had to charge my clients for my services so that I could eat and have a place to live, so I couldn't work for free either.
The key to making the whole thing work became abundantly clear to me in June of 2022. The answer was love. Love is the only currency without which we truly can't live without. Even apple trees need love to keep producing apples. Fail to care for them, fail to tend to them, and they become less and less productive until they start dying.
The same thing is true about people. When you fail to love on them, fail to care for them, fail to tend to them, they become less and less productive until they start dying. Everyone needs love, even more than they need food and shelter. In fact, give a man all the food and shelter he can stand, and he'll choose not to live if there's no love in his life. That's when you get suicides and drug/alcohol addictions. That's when you see people starving themselves to death because their hunger for love is so great nothing can replace it.
It sounds overly simplistic but think about it for a moment. We have over 8 billion people on this planet. No matter what it is you need, someone either has it or can make it possible for you to obtain. All you have to do is connect with them, demonstrate the value you can bring to their lives if they share it with you, and they'll gladly offer it up to you. If they know you love them and they love you in return, anything you ask will be yours to command.
Ironically, to demonstrate that kind of love requires serving them with a sincere desire to help them achieve their dreams with no expectation your own will be met in the process. It's risky--so risky that we can fear doing it--because quite often we serve in that way, and our generosity isn't immediately returned to us by the person we served. However, these acts of service become the seeds of our future success.
Some seeds may take 90 days to grow up. Some may take 6-9 months. Some may take years of tending to before those first fruits are ready to be harvested, and years after that before the abundant harvest of our faithful service is returned to us in a meaningful way. It won't always be the seeds that we planted that will bring harvest to us. Sometimes our reward comes from someone else, someone who watched us sowing and sowing and was touched by what we did.
But eventually, those seeds will bear fruit. The love we've poured out on others comes back to us in ways that take our breath away.
When we fill ourselves up with love, something magical happens to our hearts. There's no room left for fear, worry, and anxiety. We find ourselves filled with hope and joy at the same time, along with a peace that nothing can take from us.
At Path To Publishing, we've witnessed this in action through our Breaking Open Abundance programs. Like me, CEO and Founder, Joylynn M. Ross, used to connect abundance with money. In fact, everything was about money. After all, the electric company only keeps our lights on with money.
Once Joylynn went through the program, she felt like the Heavens opened up to her. And although no money fell out of the sky, she felt the freedom, the joy, and the peace that comes when you're confident that love will not fail you and you have hope for a better tomorrow that cannot be taken from you no matter how dark the night or how big the storm that rages around you.
It's the kind of peace that Joylynn witnessed with her friend Miss Starla Jones in Tennessee. Starla started off as a reader fan of Joylynn’s. In the past years, Starla would call Joylynn and write letters, sharing her life of true abundance, traveling the world, with no money! Joylynn once called Miss Starla at a time when Miss Starla needed $13,000 to keep her heat on because of something going bad in her home that needed repaired.
Despite the challenges facing her, and her own lack of finances to afford the repair, Miss Starla was her same joyful, pleasant, care- and worry-free self. She wasn't in a panic. She wasn’t in survival mode. She wasn't afraid. She was living a life of abundance even without heat and no means to fix the problem. She simply trusted a means would be provided when the time was right.
When Miss Starla spoke to the utility company about her situation, they asked her for the names of some friends and family they could call on her behalf. The next thing she knew, they were out at her house fixing the problem because ONE person they called paid for the repair in full.
When you're staring at a bank account that is empty and there's no food in the pantry, it can be tough to believe that if you focus on serving others, those things you need will begin to show up for you. So, when you're looking at a bill you can't imagine how you're going to pay, or a thing you need you can't figure out how you're going to get, don't ask yourself how you're going to get the money to pay for it or get it.
Instead, think about who you can serve with love and how you can show up to make the world a better place. It may not come right away, but when you show up that way, it will come eventually. And when it comes, it will come with abundance.
Sometimes walking in abundance can feel like walking a circus tightrope. It can seem far easier said than done. It may even feel like a lonely trek. And that is exactly why we’ve created our Breaking Open Abundance programs, retreats, and conferences: to help you--even chauffeur you--along your journey.
As exciting as the above opportunities are, most of them are months away and may not be in the budget for where you are in life at this time. We don’t want you to have to wait. We want you to get a taste of what we’ve been experiencing NOW! That’s why we put together the Break Open Abundance NOW! webinar designed to help YOU start Breaking Open Abundance in your life . . . now . . . so that you will be ready both mentally and financially for all the abundance programs we have to offer.
This free webinar will give you 7 specific steps that you can take to start the process of Breaking Open Abundance.
The 7 Steps:
Redefine Success
Focus on Relationships
Connect to a Community
Serve to Succeed
Embrace Adversity
Re-Evaluate Wealth
Stop Hiding Your Gold
Don’t miss out on your chance to start Breaking Open Abundance…for FREE by visiting the following link now: https://youtu.be/2G8YdaDRS7I​
